The title “In the Red and Brown Water” derives from a dream of sexual awakening and sad prophecy, recounted early in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s poetic drama about life and love on the Louisiana bayou in (as the playbill indicates) “the Distant Present.” But you might think of this opening to the trilogy collectively called “The Brother/Sister Plays” as “Fecundity and its Discontents,” so powerfully does it depict sexuality as a life force, the strength or lack of which is crucial to the happiness and continuity of generations.

"The Brother/Sister Plays, Part 1: ‘In the Red and Brown Water’"

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays through April 15, then in rotating repertory with “Part 2: ‘The Brothers Size’ and ‘Marcus, Or the Secret of Sweet,’” various days and times through May 13.

The central character is a young woman called Oya (a name, like several here, drawn from Yoruban mythology) who can run like the wind, but misses the chance for that skill to lead her to a life of greater opportunity. In grief both because her mother has died and she does not become a mother in turn, Oya is overtaken by a sadness she can’t shake -- even through the romantic attentions of the cocksure, tempestuous Shango and/or the awkwardly devoted Ogun.

Some things about the show may take some getting used to: a presentational approach in which characters often speak their stage directions (“Ogun leaves the way he came,” for instance), stylized gestures that mark the entrances and exits of certain characters, moments of the supernatural. But we’re soon drawn in fully by Victor Mack’s deft, deeply sympathetic direction and a host of rich performances (with Jennifer Lanier, Bobby Bermea and Brian Demar Jones most affecting) that dig deep into McCraney’s by turns beautiful and bawdy language.